We still don't know what the game really looks like. The only thing we have to go off of is progress videos which seem to get better and better each time. Reserving judgement until I see the actual gameplay footage.

dietsoap wrote:To add to this though, I do think 2 was also just a little more stylized than the first game. Perhaps you could argue 3 is just continuing this trend, and maybe Suzuki had always intended this sort of progression.

I don't think it's ever been confirmed, but Shenmue II boosting the colours and trending into more extravagant designs always felt like a choice made on purpose to highlight the difference between China and Japan; as a way to heighten the feeling of going to a strange, new place.

mjq jazz bar wrote: I don't like the lighting. Everything else, aside from the animation, looks ok to me.

While I think the lighting is improved vastly from last year, I do agree I'm not sure I could accept it as "final". Realistically though, it will still change.

Even with games that have smoke and mirrors vertical slices where all the presentation elements are rushed to final quality, the biggest difference between those demos and retail release usually will be lighting. I doubt that Shenmue III's lighting will remain untouched for the rest of development, especially knowing how iterative the development process has been so far.

The animation looks okay for Alpha, IMO. If that stuff was done we wouldn't be having a delay to 2019. Ryo's subtle transition in and out of smiling in the new clip of him and Shenhua looks quite encouraging though.

Spaghetti wrote:While I think the lighting is improved vastly from last year, I do agree I'm not sure I could accept it as "final". Realistically though, it will still change.

This might be tangential, but one thought I had is that the scenes we're seeing might not be locked to any particular time of day in actual gameplay. One person might arrive at the scene with the little girl in the morning, another might trigger it in the afternoon. This would account for some of the differences we've seen between otherwise very similar shots and clips.

Centrale wrote:This might be tangential, but one thought I had is that the scenes we're seeing might not be locked to any particular time of day in actual gameplay. One person might arrive at the scene with the little girl in the morning, another might trigger it in the afternoon. This would account for some of the differences we've seen between otherwise very similar shots and clips.

Yeah, that's also true. The lighting set up we saw was quite an extreme "early morning" look and not really reflective of how the game will look in more neutral conditions.

I always imagined Shenmue games to go as far with realstic looks as the hardware allows. Shenmue definately had the most polygon- and texture-power for the face demos of anything back in the day so it's easy to assume that was always the ultimate goal.

If the series kept going we might've ended up now with scanning technology to create super realistic characters.But you really have to think if that was really what the characters we're made to be like. To some extent they were in fact stylized, at least the main cast, and that was of course to get a distinct look. Some of the NPCs looked more lifelike in a way, especially as some actually had photos of real faces for their texture.

I'd like to see a hint more realism in the Shenmue III models but what we got so far is definately in line with a Shenmue look. I'm happy with it and so should we all be really.

I don't like them personally (specially that fucking muscle guy), but if they end up achieving a coherent art style, for what I've seen, it's not going to be too rough on the eyes.

I don't want Shenmue to look like any other AA game that tries to be uncharted but ends up mediocre.

What I think it will be a deal breaker are the animations, a character can look great but if you don't have consistency it's all for nothing (well, trying to go for a more animated look makes it evade for a while the uncanny valley).

Basically, yes I would have prefered a more realistic look, I don't mind the way it's going.

I think they are aiming for these type of graphics which would be the perfect art direction for them to take. By the way I really, really hope that the final model of Shenhua looks like this in Shenmue III.

So, personally, my answer is no. Shenmue has always been highly stylized imo, and I believe it's just the difference in fidelity and graphical tech between a 20 yo game and an UE4 game that is causing the perceived dissonance between the old games and 3. Just my personal opinion, though.

Can I just say thank you for this? I've been making the same point ad nauseam for ages now whenever someone brings up the "why is the art direction so weird? The original games were so realistic!" argument. I think people forgot how zany some of the character designs were or just don't notice because of the graphical limitations of the time and how advanced the graphical engine was back then.

I mean there's Big Z (was that his name?). To me, Shenmue 3 looks like it's the same kind of art direction and character designs, only the features seem more exaggerated because increased resolution and improved graphics.

So, personally, my answer is no. Shenmue has always been highly stylized imo, and I believe it's just the difference in fidelity and graphical tech between a 20 yo game and an UE4 game that is causing the perceived dissonance between the old games and 3. Just my personal opinion, though.

Can I just say thank you for this? I've been making the same point ad nauseam for ages now whenever someone brings up the "why is the art direction so weird? The original games were so realistic!" argument. I think people forgot how zany some of the character designs were or just don't notice because of the graphical limitations of the time and how advanced the graphical engine was back then.

I mean there's Big Z (was that his name?). To me, Shenmue 3 looks like it's the same kind of art direction and character designs, only the features seem more exaggerated because increased resolution and improved graphics.

Big Z is a weird character, but certainly not cartoony.

The previous games were cutting edge and as realistic as anything we'd ever seen. To say that they were zany cartoon characters would be revisionist history.